Cyber job ads on the rise

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Job advertising has rocketed to new heights in cyberspace, but
the lift may be restricted to the cyber-savvy.

A report from recruitment firm Olivier Group says the Olivier
Internet Job Index rose 4 per cent in June. On average, 163,837
jobs appeared on the major job boards each week.

"This is a substantial increase at a time when there's
traditionally a market dip," said Olivier Group director Helen
Olivier.

Multimedia, internet and graphics jobs rose 21.45 per cent while
the IT industry added another 1.46 percentage points last month to
be up 55.75 per cent on this time last year.

But labour economists said the results were skewed by the medium
of the internet and could not be used to project growth throughout
the entire labour market.

National Institute of Labour Studies director Sue Richardson
said jobs requiring computer literacy would be disproportionately
represented in a survey of online advertisements, while other
sectors would more likely appear in traditional media.

"It's a very interesting period at the moment as to just where
jobs are being advertised," Ms Richardson said. "It's difficult to
know, if you just look at one medium, whether you're getting a
proper reflection of what is going on in the market at large.

"With IT jobs, you would expect the internet to be the place,
because it appeals to that type of worker."

ANZ economist Katie Dean agreed that the rise in internet
advertisements, while an interesting phenomenon, did not accurately
reflect the labour market as a whole.

"There seems to be a bit of a divergence between the internet
and newspaper job advertisements," Ms Dean said.

"It probably suggests that the strength in the labour market at
the moment is concentrated in sectors that are more likely to be
advertised on the internet than in traditional newspaper
formats."

Ms Dean said a measure of purely internet advertising probably
would not depict the weakness observed in retail and housing over
the past year.

The monthly report by ANZ Bank into newspaper advertising will
be released on Monday.

Ms Richardson called the current behaviour of the labour market
puzzling. "The growth in jobs ads as recorded by official data
seems to be much faster than the growth in output. People have not
quite sorted out what is going on here."